Hello,
I'm pretty much a noob when it comes to this stuff so I was hoping the experts here might be able to give me some guidance.
I purchased some gear from a radio station that went out of business. I'm going to be using their studio furniture in my home studio. This stuff has been in their storage for at least a decade so it's filthy and needs a little TLC, but I think I can give it a good home.
Built into the furniture is a lot of cool hardware, for example, these headphone jacks with volume knobs.
But these seem to have some kind of molex connection (is that perhaps balanced audio? Or one of the molexes is standard audio and the other is a passthrough to go to the next headphone jack? Taking random guesses here...) and I don't have a clue how to wire them to the standard headphone output from my mixing console. Seems to be a resistor between the volume knob and the headphone jack as well.
There are three of these jacks built into the table and I'd like to wire audio to all of them. Will definitely be getting an amplifier to handle that but I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to the wiring.
Any idea where to start with these?
I'm pretty much a noob when it comes to this stuff so I was hoping the experts here might be able to give me some guidance.
I purchased some gear from a radio station that went out of business. I'm going to be using their studio furniture in my home studio. This stuff has been in their storage for at least a decade so it's filthy and needs a little TLC, but I think I can give it a good home.
Built into the furniture is a lot of cool hardware, for example, these headphone jacks with volume knobs.
But these seem to have some kind of molex connection (is that perhaps balanced audio? Or one of the molexes is standard audio and the other is a passthrough to go to the next headphone jack? Taking random guesses here...) and I don't have a clue how to wire them to the standard headphone output from my mixing console. Seems to be a resistor between the volume knob and the headphone jack as well.
There are three of these jacks built into the table and I'd like to wire audio to all of them. Will definitely be getting an amplifier to handle that but I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to the wiring.
Any idea where to start with these?
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The makers seem to have had a lot of two core cable they wanted to use up.
The connections to the Molex are doubled up. Probably because it is easier to use separate cables and then join them at the control end. It could be to make continuation to another headphone connection as a daisy chain. Looks like Black is common and Red is signal from the amplifier, (doubled up).
So, don't be fooled by the excess of connections.
The connections to the Molex are doubled up. Probably because it is easier to use separate cables and then join them at the control end. It could be to make continuation to another headphone connection as a daisy chain. Looks like Black is common and Red is signal from the amplifier, (doubled up).
So, don't be fooled by the excess of connections.
Always hard to figure out how something was intended to be used but if you look at each gang of the pot it would seem that the two leads are just in parallel.
So not balanced audio, what you feed into one plug simply appears directly at the other... so a feedthrough to something else.
The pot is 1k and so that suggests high impedance headphones would be used.
So it looks to be just a 1k pot across an audio feed (from a suitable amplifier) with the output to the 'phones taken from the wiper.
The series resistor from the wiper to the socket will be to prevent the pot burning should the user plug in something unsuitable (low impedance) and turn the level up.
Non of this is great from an audio quality perspective. Far better to have the pot as a volume control feeding a suitable headphone amp rather than feeding headphones from a variable high impedance source which the pot is.
So not balanced audio, what you feed into one plug simply appears directly at the other... so a feedthrough to something else.
The pot is 1k and so that suggests high impedance headphones would be used.
So it looks to be just a 1k pot across an audio feed (from a suitable amplifier) with the output to the 'phones taken from the wiper.
The series resistor from the wiper to the socket will be to prevent the pot burning should the user plug in something unsuitable (low impedance) and turn the level up.
Non of this is great from an audio quality perspective. Far better to have the pot as a volume control feeding a suitable headphone amp rather than feeding headphones from a variable high impedance source which the pot is.
It's a feedthrough (from one molex to the volume pot in and from the pot out to the second molex) with a branch off to the jack with the resistor. So it's not balanced but stereo, although only one channel seems to go to the jack. What is written on the molex's?
Edit: 3 hits almost simultaniously!
Edit: 3 hits almost simultaniously!
Hey thanks for the replies!
"P4" is written on the molex.
Your responses got me thinking. I played a song on my iPhone and spliced the end off a 1/8" headphone extension, which I touched to some of the molex pins, and I got audio out of the jack!
This is going to be easier than I'd hoped. Thanks for all the help.
The next challenge will be figuring out the remote microphone on/off/cough buttons. I think those are designed to feed the logic port of a broadcast console so that might be beyond my abilities. Oh well, that's for another thread on another day.
Thanks again!
"P4" is written on the molex.
Your responses got me thinking. I played a song on my iPhone and spliced the end off a 1/8" headphone extension, which I touched to some of the molex pins, and I got audio out of the jack!
This is going to be easier than I'd hoped. Thanks for all the help.
The next challenge will be figuring out the remote microphone on/off/cough buttons. I think those are designed to feed the logic port of a broadcast console so that might be beyond my abilities. Oh well, that's for another thread on another day.
Thanks again!
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